Computers I: CD-Roms vs. books

There are many who believe that the traditional book is being phased out in favour of the computer. I am not quite sure of this, though I concede that a great deal of information is being sold and manufactured only on disc.

The reason I question the prevailing view is that as a child, my friends and I envisioned a world of the not-too-distant future in which we read all our novels on a screen, perhaps not even moving our eyes to read. We talked about how our eyes might have to get used to a stream of words moving across the screen. We really thought that this would occur in our lifetime.

Ray Bradbury wrote about the burning of books in Fahrenheit 451. Written as television was becoming the norm in American homes, the book shows the widespread fear felt for the future of literature. In our time, it is not literature that is being lost, for short stories and poetry are freely available online or in CD-Rom format. It is paper which seems to be going.

In many ways, this is a good thing, because paper comes from trees and trees are becoming scarce. Running paperless businesses would be a wonderful advance for the environmental cause. Dramatically reducing paper use is definitely possible. Faxes can be sent through computers (signatures can even be scanned and added to letters if required), though e-mails are probably set to remain the most popular form of written electronic correspondence. Printed letters should well become obsolete very soon.

The problem of signatures could conceivably be overcome with a shift in attitudes. For centuries in Japan, people have used a signature seal or stamp instead of a written signature. The signature seal or inkan could be forged, perhaps more easily than a handwritten signature, but it is accepted by banks and other businesses as a legal sign of agreement. If businesses can accept some electronic “signature” in the same way, then the need for many paper forms and letters would be gone. The Personal Identification Number of PIN is already accepted as a form of personal agreement to many transactions, such as access to confidential information and making cash transactions. Acceptance of an “electronic signature” is not hard to see in the future.

It seems inevitable that a great deal of printed matter will soon be a thing of the past. Not many families buy printed encyclopedias any more. Many universities provide full sets of notes online, and use online assessment systems. It is very possible that we will in time lose our taste for the tactile joys of reading books, turning pages, randomly browsing through non-fiction (which cannot really be done with the internet or CD-Rom encyclopedias, because of the way search engines work). As a confirmed book lover, I cannot see myself losing my desire for reading both fiction and non-fiction in bed, but I can see that many of my contemporaries have lost that need already.

Go To Page: 1

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic